The article “Body Image Disorder in Adolescent Males” by
Marsha Wiggins and Eric J. Stout describes the ways in which male adolescents around
the world are constantly surrounded by images on television of the ideal man
who is muscular and attractive to women. The authors make the argument that the
body images portrayed on television are fake and impossible to obtain without
steroids which can lead boys to rely on eating or image disorders to achieve
the male body ideal. When reading this article, I was surprised to discover
that men suffer from eating disorders, not only women. The authors offer advice
for school counselors on how to help their male students overcome these
disorders. The implications of these findings are that images of idealized men
on television can be harmful to a male adolescent’s mental, emotional, and
physical well-being.
Duane Hargreaves and Marika Tiggermann take a sociocultural
approach to study the transmission of body ideals through television
commercials in their article “Idealized Media Images and Adolescent Body
Image.” They present research that exposure to idealized body images in
commercials increased only female adolescents’ body dissatisfaction, but did
not affect male adolescents’ body image. This contradicts the findings of the
articles by Frame, Stout, and Labre and surprises me that muscular male body
ideals had no effect on the male adolescent body image in terms of
satisfaction. The implications of this study is that media has a stronger
impact on females.
In the article “Adolescent Boys and the Muscular Male Body
Ideal,” Magdala Peixoto Labre provides evidence to show that muscular male body
ideal on television causes male adolescents to be dissatisfied with their
bodies and engage in unhealthy behaviors to control their weight and image. One
implication of this evidence is that male adolescents are at risk of performing
dangerous behavior to pursue the male body ideal. Labre shows that although
more research and time are spent on effects of television on the female body
image, the effects of television on male adolescents deserves more attention
and must be researched more through surveys and studies. I was not surprised
that less research has been spent on the male body image portrayed on
television since I have heard little about this topic before beginning my
research.
Deborah Schooler and Sarah Trinh wrote the article “Longitudinal
Associations between Television Viewing Patterns and Adolescent Body Satisfaction”
in which they study associations between adolescent television use and body
image. Their longitudinal study reported that television viewing was unrelated
to body image in boys, although girls who watched more television were the most
dissatisfied with their bodies. Although this presents findings similar to the
those presented by Duane Hargreaves and Marika Tiggermann , I was once again
surprised that television use did not impact male body image. This also has
implications that media has a stronger effect on females.
Very little attention has been given to the effect of television on the adolescent male body ideal in the popular media or news. One example of popular media coverage that is relevant to this topic and discusses the effect of television on the male body ideal is a report by MSNBC called "Guys have body issues, too" written by the Associated Press. This report was done in 2006 and talked to men of different ages about their body insecurities when presented with images of men in Abercrombie advertisements on billboards or on television. An example image is given below of an idealized male muscular body in an Abercrombie advertisement. This report found that all males who reported watching more prime time television had greater insecurities and body image issues.
.jpg)
